Society

​MOLDOVAN AUTHORITIES BUILDING UP LIST OF RUSSIAN PERSONAE NON GRATAE

29 may, 2015

On Thursday, the Moldovan authorities denied entry into the republic to Dmitrii Kaistro, a special correspondent of the VGTRK (All-Russia State Television and Radio Company).

According to the Russian mass media [the Moldovan Border Service did not provide whatever operative information about this new incident in the Chisinau International Airport], the journalist heard upon landing in Chisinau that entry to Moldova had been prohibited to him – from now and for next 5 years.

Upon return home on board the same plane which brought him to Chisinau, he stated to the Moscow media, “This is a pretty muddy situation reminding the novels of Orwell and other writers who wrote about utopias”.

“Upon arrival in Chisinau, our VGTRK film-shooting team was subjected to a very long and very severe customs examination. They have looked through and shaken up all our things. They demanded to show all our documents and asked how many times each of us had visited Moldova. They demanded to produce our journalist cards – demanded in a manner that meant explicitly that “if only we find them in your things, and not you produce them yourselves, then you are going to have really big problems”. After that they collected all our documents – half an hour after all other checks and after a cross-interrogation. Those were border guards and Customs officers, as well as gentlemen from some other services. Eventually we were told that our cameraman may enter Moldova, but I was declared a persona non grata in Moldova until 2019”, said Dmitrii Kaistro.

The journalist said that previously he used to come to Moldova quite frequently and to cover the situation and events here in detail, in particular the November 30, 2014 parliamentary elections.

“But already then I experienced fairly tough conversations with me. I was demanded to write explanations about what I did and where I went, though I was doing my usual journalist job and I was on an official work mission fulfilling my editorial task”, said Dmitrii Kaistro.

As already reported by Infotag, this is not the first such incident with Russian journalists at the Chisinau airport. Earlier this year, an analogous ‘warm welcome’ was given to other guests from Russia – correspondent Alexander Balitskii and program hosts Andrei Kondrashov and Dmitrii Kiselev.

Earlier this week, the Moldovan Audiovisual Coordinating Council (ACC) prohibited the retransmission of Rossiya-24 information-analytical television channel in the Republic of Moldova. The media watchdog arrived at a conclusion that the channel’s editorial policy is at odds with the Moldovan Code of Television and Radio Broadcasting, local election campaigning rules and the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. In particular, the ACC stated that the Russian channel presents only the position of Russia, and not of other foreign countries.

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